Free Chasing Orion by Kathryn Lasky Page A

the barstool.
    “What do you mean?” I asked. My breath caught in my throat.
    “I mean I could imagine . . . you know . . .”
    “Dating him? Really?” I couldn’t wait to get home and call Evelyn.
    “Yes, really, except for, of course, the obvious. Kind of hard to date a girl in an iron lung.” She paused. I felt my heart pounding. It was louder than the beast.
    “I . . . I don’t know,” I said softly.
    “Don’t know what?” Phyllis asked. The mirrors flickered.
    “I . . . I don’t know what. . . . I don’t know.” I laughed slightly.
    “Do you think Emmett might like me a little bit?” Her blue eyes seemed huge. Was she about to cry?
    “Are you saying that you kind of like Emmett and you sort of hope he likes you?”
    “Yeah . . . but I’m kind of a freak, you know.”
    “So’s he,” I said. Phyllis laughed out loud at this, a really big two- or three-hiccup laugh.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounds.”
    “Oh, Georgie, I love you!” Her eyes flashed with delight.
    “You do?” I couldn’t believe it. “I mean, we’re both freaks, I guess.”
    “All three of us!” Phyllis added. Then she was quiet and her eyes were serious again. “So maybe you could find out if he likes me just a teeny tiny bit?”
    I couldn’t believe she was asking me to do this. This was too neat! I’d do this. I’d not only find out; I would make this happen.
    But first, of course, I had to call Evelyn.
    The Winklers had a special line for their kids since they were doctors and couldn’t have their telephone tied up with their kids yakking when someone might be dying or having a baby. Evelyn picked up on the second ring. “I got data!” I screamed. “Date data!”
    I began to recount carefully, word for word, my conversation with Phyllis. “She began by saying, ‘Tell me more about Emmett.’”
    Evelyn and I had been on the phone about five minutes or less. I got to the part when Phyllis asked me if Emmett might like her a little bit, and the dating questions, when she interrupted and said, “Hold on a second. I’ve got to go.”
    “Not your bladder again?”
    “No. I’m getting index cards to enter the information on. I want to write it all down. Then I’ll color-code it all.”
    Talk about taking the romance out of romance — index cards, color-coding! Pure Evelyn!

 
    From the pantry, I heard them talking in their low kitchen voices. These were not the voices they used when they were talking about a disobedient Jell-O mold that had failed to unmold perfectly or how you could hardly whip cream with all this humidity. These were their other voices. The ones that children were not supposed to hear. I heard the words
iron lung,
and I had a feeling they might have been talking about Emmett and Phyllis.
    We were out at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm for Sunday dinner. I stayed in the pantry to listen and pretended to study the Holstein breeders’ calendar that Grandpa had hung up there. For August they had a picture of an immense stud bull called Elandor of Eckbow. A caption underneath the picture read:
    Sired Caprice. Winner of the Dairymans’ High Yield Award three years running. Distinguished maternal pedigree. Extreme milk yield transmitter backed by two excellent dams with milk yields of over 38,000 pounds.
     
    But I was really just listening and not concentrating on Elandor. “That is so sad. But at least she gets to be at home. Not in a hospital,” Grandma was saying while admiring the three-flavored Jell-O mold with fruit suspended in the green part that had just exited most perfectly from its enamel fluted dish. They talked some more, and then Mom said, “You’ll never guess what.”
    “What?”
    “Velma’s daughter is pregnant!”
    “Oh, my word!” Grandma exclaimed in a loud whisper. “And she’s captain of the Hoosier Twirlers!”
    “Yes,” Mama said.
    “Well, she won’t be twirling for long!” Grandma sort of snickered. “Babies do get in the way of a